Chinese space station program up and away

LINTAO ZHANG : GETTY IMAGES
BLASTOFF: A rocket carrying Tiangong-1, China's first space lab module, lifts off in darkness Thursday from Gansu province. The unmanned Tiangong-1 will stay in orbit for two years.

Photo: Lintao Zhang

BEIJING - The launch of an experimental module this week represents a significant step in China's plan to build a space station.

The Tiangong-1 module, or "Heavenly Palace-1," blasted into space Thursday from a remote base in China's northwest Gansu province ahead of the country's National Day celebration Saturday.

The unmanned module, which will be operated remotely from a center in Beijing, will serve as a space laboratory and docking target for other spacecraft. It will remain in space about two years.

The module is expected to rendezvous and dock with Shenzhou 8, another unmanned craft that is due to launch in early November. If that mission succeeds, the module will dock with two more spacecraft, Shenzhou 9 and 10. Manned missions may begin in 2012.

Program in 2nd stage

Joan Johnson-Freese, a space expert at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., said China's spaceflight technology is roughly as sophisticated as that of Gemini, NASA's human spaceflight program in the mid-1960s.

"Are they going over United States capabilities? No. But what they've got that we don't is political will, which translates into money," she said.

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TAKEOFF TUNE WAS FAMILIAR

China's state broadcaster isn't saying why the station ran the music to America the Beautiful during the gala live broadcast of the country's latest space launch.

Strains of the famed American patriotic tune rang out following the launch of the Tiangong-1 experimental space station module late Thursday night.

It wasn't clear why the music had been picked or whether CCTV producers were aware of the origins of the song, whose lyrics include the lines "America! America! God shed His grace on thee."

An operator answering phones at CCTV's Beijing headquarters on Friday said no spokesman was available, and calls to the station's international affairs department rang unanswered.

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The launch Thursday was part of the second stage in China's three-step strategy to develop its space program.

The first step was its Shenzhou capsule program, which in 2003 made China the third country in the world to successfully launch a human being into space.

The second step, currently under way, involves spacewalking as well as rendezvous and docking. Chinese astronaut Zhai Zhigang completed the country's first spacewalk in 2008. A space station may be launched between 2020 and 2022.

Lunar missions hinted

Wu Ping, a spokeswoman from China's manned space program, said the technological advances facilitated by Tiangong-1 may also be "used for moon landings and deep space exploration," according to China Daily. She emphasized that research for a potential moon landing is still in a nascent stage.

Morris Jones, a space analyst based in Sydney, Australia, said a lunar landing may be possible before the year 2025, but added that a notorious lack of transparency in China's space administration makes it difficult to speculate on the country's long-term goals.

Unlike NASA, Jones noted, "They do not put their cards on the table and say everything that they're thinking, planning and doing."